Thank you

Mrs Rees and Mrs.Cooper would like to thank everyone for the kind and thoughtful cards, presents and the very generous voucher. All were very much appreciated!
Have a wonderful summer!

Latest News! - "Year 4 write newpaper reports!"

Here are some of the interesting and exciting newpaper reports created by Year 4.

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Blazing lights shine over Blandford (By Ellie)

Rumours spread around a little town called Blandford as a teacher claimed to see an amazing alien space craft last night.

The Office of National Security sent somebody immediately to investigate. The reporter interviewed the teacher and they searched the field.

She said “I heard a noise and then I saw blazing lights it landed in our school field and before my amazed eyes the small door slid open and a creature appeared it had three googly eyes on stalks that looked around while it stomped.

There are two other people that witnessed the space craft too. They said that they saw it hovering amazingly above the school.

The department found a broken fence and some flattened grass and so the investigation will be continued.

Blinding Lights at Blandford St Mary (By Jamie)
Confused stories were being spread all over Blandford last night. A teacher reported that a disc shaped spacecraft had landed in the centre of the school field.

Mrs Rees, the teacher claimed “I was working late marking books when I heard a rumbling sound getting louder and louder. Instantly the noise stopped, suddenly the spacecraft landed on the school field.

The teacher explained that bright red door slid open and an ugly, strange alien scrambled out. Iit had 3 miniature heads 5 eyes on stalks and a very lumpy bumpy skin.

Curiously the spaceship door had broken. Mrs Rees thought it was because it had hit a rock on its way down to earth which meant it couldn't take off. The alien appeared to be looking for something to fix its door with, it selected a few strips of wood and it soon got to work. The wood crashed and bashed together. The door was soon fixed. The ugly alien made its way back to the spacecraft, then quick as a flash it was gone.

Supporting Mrs Rees, the Year3 teachers reported to have seen the alien too. She witnessed that the alien looked worried. Luckily there was evidence of burnt, blackened grass where the space ship had taken off. The case will be further investigated by the local police who firmly believe there has been something down from the sky. Everyone is taking case very seriously. More investigations will be taking place to find out more about this alien.

Teacher sees UFO (By Maisy)
 Last night a teacher was marking Year 4 work when a dim light in the sky suspiciously appeared. The teacher thought it was a helicopter from the army. So she settled back down and when she looked out the window she saw it again but it was much closer this time.

After a few minutes it landed with no sound on the field and a little door on the side opened and out came an alien. It climbed out slowly sniffing the air. It was as small as a baby and had slime dripping down cold wet fur. Its 14 googly eyes looked around fearfully.

It bent down and ate some grass and went back to the UFO and the alien climbed quietly on. It started up again and as quick as a flash it was gone!

The next day the school was closed and there were lots of investigators from the Department of National Security. They never found any evidence of aliens and the case was closed.

Leeson house.

This week we have been to stay at Lesson House Field Studies Centre.
 Here are some pictures of our activities......


 

We had the most amazing time!
Next week we will be writing recounts of our time at Leeson.
We would like to share them with you at our assembly on Friday June 28th so please come along!

Literacy - "Start your day the Zingoes way!"

We have been learning to produce playscripts using persuasive language and techniques.

Watch our adverts that tell you all you need to know about our 

"Brand new, Healthy, Breakfast Cereal!!!"

Would you buy Zingoes now?

Science/Topic - Home and away.

This week we will be starting our new topic 'Home and Away'.
We will begin by looking at the different places animals choose to make their homes.
Click HERE to see a video about animals building their homes

and click HERE to see another video about different types of animal homes.

Later we will see how the animals are adapted to their different habitats. (click HERE)

To test your knowledge of animal habitats try this activity (click HERE)

Literacy/Arts week.

Here are some examples of our persuasive writing made into travel posters.

 

We wish we could go now!

Arts week Focus - The harbour at Rio De Janeiro.

In Arts week we are learning about the 'New Seven Natural Wonders of the World.'
The Harbour at Rio De Janeiro in Brazil is one of these.

We are going to explore some of the famous sights of Rio De Janeiro and create landscape paintings, looking carefully at how we can achieve perspective in our work.

In our literacy we will be learning about persuasive writing. We will look at the tourist sights and sounds of Rio De Janeiro and create a travel poster encouraging people to visit 'The Marvellous City!'



In Music we will have fun learning to play Samba rhythms.

Click HERE to see how Brazilian children learn to play Samba.

Water music!

The Journey of a River.  
A musical composition by Pumpkin Base.

 We have been learning about the different parts of a river.
In groups, we each took a part of the river and selected percussion instruments to describe the varying movements and features and combined our sounds to create different textures.
We created symbols and scores so that everyone knew when and how to play.

Here is a video of our sound story.

Visit by Wessex Water Education

Today we were treated to an amazing morning of water science led by Mr Duncan Forbes.
First, we were able to join in an explanation of the water cycle and show how much we had learned already.
Then Mr Forbes explained the role of Wessex Water. The water collects in a reservoir and is directed to the water works where it has to be sieved and filtered to remove the debris. Then the exact amount of chlorine is added to make it safe. After lots of tests the clean water travels through underground pipes to our houses.

Next it was our turn to do some testing! Our job was to see if we could identify the origin of three water samples. We had to conduct a pH test, to find out if the water was acid, neutral or alkaline, a chlorine test and a hardness test to find the levels of minerals in the water.

From our evidence we deduced which sample was tap water, which was swimming pool water and which was rain water.
Mr Forbes then explained that a big problem for Wessex Water is blocked pipes. He made a horrible mixture of all the things we could think of that went down the drains from our houses!

He challenged us to think about which things could go into the sewers and which should be put in the bin instead.
Hands on time again!
We had three types of paper, water, bottles and sticks and we had to design and conduct a FAIR TEST to investigate which papers were suitable for flushing and why!

 We found that the toilet roll disintegrated in the water but the tissues and the paper towels didn't and so they should NOT be flushed!
It was an amazing morning of discovery and we would like to say a big thank you to Mr Forbes from us all!
For more information and activities from Wessex Water click HERE 

Geography. The Journey of a River.

This week we will be looking at the journey a river takes from the time it begins at its source to the time it flows into the sea at the mouth.We will explore how it grows as tributaries join together and how it increases speed and power as it travels down mountains and hills and creates waterfalls and rapids. We will look at how the features change as the land flattens and the river meanders through the flood plains and finally reaches its destination.

Science. Sorting out the mess!

In our science this week we have been we have been investigating how different materials can be sorted.

In our craft cupboard a lot of different things had got mixed up and we needed a good sort out!
What could we do?

First we decided to use a magnet to
attract the steel; this extracted all the paper clips.
Next we used a colanderwhich held the lentils but let the rice and salt through.

Finally we used a sieve which held the rice and the salt came through
on it's own!   -   SORTED!!!!!!!


 Click HERE to see a video clip about separating solids and liquids in real life situations.

Music

This week in music we will be making our own river composition.
The following activities will remind you of the skills you will need to be using and developing.eg
Recognising sounds, rhythms and moods as well as creating and following simple notation.

Click HERE to see the activity.

Practical maths.

We used a variety of different shaped containers with different scales to measure liquids in litres and mls.

It was fun predicting what 100mls would look like in each container!

Literacy / Science - Explaining the water cycle.

We have been researching the water cycle and discovering how it works. We used our literacy skills to write explanations of the process, our D.T. skills to create a working model and our I.C.T. skills to produce powerpoints.
This is an exampole of how the presentations came together.

Art/ literacy Spots before the eyes!

In our literacy we have been looking at stories from another culture. We have focused on Australia and have been discovering traditional stories from the Dreamtime. We have learnt how the stories have been handed down through music and art as well as story telling.
Here we are trying out the technique of dot painting to illustrate the story of the blue tongued lizard.

Water Everywhere! New topic for the summer term

Welcome back everyone!

This half term we have a very exciting topic called 'Water Everywhere'.


We will begin by learning about the water cycle.

Here are two video clips to whet your appetite!



Click HERE to see an animation of the Water Cycle.

Click HERE to visit Wessex Water website to learn more and test your knowledge.

Art. Marbling egg effects.

This year we created our Easter cards using a marbling effect created by dropping different coloured inks into water. We could change the patterns by gently stirring the mixture.

Aren't they great?

Science. experiments in water resistance

In our study of forces we have completed an investigation looking at water resistance. We used two plasticene spheres of exactly the same weight. We dropped them at exactly the same time into two identical containers, one was empty but the other contained water.

We found that the sphere dropped quicker in the empty container. The sphere in the water dropped more slowly because although gravity was pulling it down, water resistance acted against this force.

We then wondered what shape would be the most effective in travelling through the water.
We decided to try a cylinder and a cone.

We found that the cone reached the bottom first as the streamlined shape cut most effectivly through the
water resistance.